Philip K. Dick 24 min read

Peering through the telescope at a distant planet, the Captain confirms it: an atomic war, and no pretty sight. Why come all this way, the Navigator asks, if there's nothing left even to land for?

Philip K. Dick's 1952 story is a taut, ironic first-contact and post-apocalyptic tale. Sharp, memorable golden-age SF. Read it for early PKD, explorers drawn to a dead, war-blasted world by a mysterious signal, and the automatic gun that still faithfully guards the ruins of everything it destroyed.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

24 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal